


adjust.

by asdfghjkla



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-20
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asdfghjkla/pseuds/asdfghjkla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mother freezes in the doorway and Rose thinks, how perfect. Framed just like a picture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	adjust.

Rose tries her best to understand.

She's just like the sky, she thinks. (She is young.)

So close yet so distant. It fills her life. Kind, calm, cool, blue, familiar. Bright, cold, dark, icy. It rains too often here. The sun shines only in patches, in batches, and she tries not to look forward to those days. Clouds shift into shapes, changing, changing, changing. When she was young(er than this) she used to chase them and cried when they got away. Then the ceiling in her room changed from pink to periwinkle blue and an artist came and painted fluffy white things in the shape of rabbits, ducks, kittens.

Now she knows better. Clouds cross the sky in an endless dance, changing, changing, changing, and she watches them pass. There's no pattern to it at all. Storms come too quickly. Yet there are signs. She teaches herself to read the sky, to feel the shift in wind, to memorize it like a sailor. It's easier that way. To map it. To measure it. To capture it in the way one would in photographs.

Her eyes, though. She can never quite known what to do with her eyes. They're like the moon, like the stars, even more distant, and so cold. So bright she can't help but reach out. (Sometimes.) Even when the clouds cross over and cover them, hide them away like secrets, like things she isn't meant to touch.

*

Some nights mother is kind and offers a warm shoulder and tells stories - through books, mostly. She tries not to cling to moments like this. It is dangerous, she learns.

Some nights mother is distant, eyes drawn like curtains and steps dizzy, clumsy, words falling slippery like rain, hand clasping a glass filled with something sparkling. "You're still awake, dear?" she says, always kind, always considerate, even when her eyes are clearly elsewhere. Mother would send her to bed early those nights, glass of water to match her wine, but sometimes there would still be stories. The ones that have no beginning, no end, just hapless fairytales spun on the spot, or, sometimes, rarely, the occasional lapse into memory. They're just meaningless anecdotes, her mother would say, waving away her questions like fruit flies. (This is how you build a mystery.) They don't mean anything. (When she is older, she thinks, of course. Stories are fabrications. Lies are stories. Memories can be lies, also. She tries her best to grasp the difference between the two when the speaker sports no tells.)

Most days pass like nights. Good, bad, a mix. Even though the words are always so soft, so sweet, like peaches. The motherly touches always gentle, compassionate. (Lies, she thinks. Lies, lies, lies, lies. If words can be twisted, why not actions? If stories can be faked, why not everything else?) She looks into the face of her mother and sees a mask. She looks into the mirror and tries to replicate it.

Doting mother, loving daughter.

It is a game, she realizes. A charade.

Life is a stage and we are merely players.

(She is young.)

She does not reconsider.

*

Rose has always known about lies. Just as she has known about mysteries. About secrets.

(They are thing to be kept in secret places with secret keys and if you can't unlock them with trust then you must use trickery.)

Lies can add to the mystery, mystery falls apart without its secrets, and secrets can sound all too much like lies.

She is a smart girl, a bright girl, clever girl. She is well aware of this. (She is young.)

She grasps the basics of things and moves on from there. Once she learns sound of the alphabet, she teaches herself big words. Once she has learns the shape of letters, she teaches herself how to spin sentences like silk. It her system. It is the only method that satisfies her.

She knows about lies. She knows about mysteries. She knows about secrets. But she knows them only as words, as ideas, grasps the concept the way a child would. It is not enough for Rose. It frustrates her. She is better than this. So at school she teaches herself how to hold back smiles and to speak in half-truths and to not always say what she means.

(She is careful, though. So very careful.

She will not bring her tricks home until she has mastered her craft.

Until then, she will do her best to keep it all a secret. What better way to practice than this? She is an enigma, a jigsaw, a puzzle. She is building a mystery no one will solve.)

*

Rose likes words. She likes the shape of them. The sound of them. She like way they twist together like flowers in a bouquet, fall into place like pearls on a necklace, fill the empty spaces like music fills a quiet room.

She likes stories even more. (Because they are not real. Because they are real. Because they cannot be cupped between her hands like water yet aren't quite as intangible as the stars.) Stories can be barricades and stories can be open doors. Stories can be told through walls. Stories can reach as far as the horizon, chasing the sky the way only clouds can.

(She is young.)

"If you like stories so much," she says one night, eyes to the ceiling, head lolling against the head of the armchair, "then you should write your own."

The only thing wrong with the idea is that it isn't hers.

*

One day she grows tired of her books and wanders through the library as if it were a maze.

She takes a wrong turn but instead of acting lost she draws a book from the shelf. She wipes the dust off the cover but does not bother to read the title. She does not need to know. Already, it feels right in her hand, just heavy enough. She settles down, pressing her back against the bookcase, enjoying the feel of their crooked spines against her own, and begins to flip through the pages. The dust settles around her like snow.

Her mother finds her three hours later, still struggling through the first chapter. (She is young.)

"So this is where you wandered," she simpers. Rose tries to ignore the way the smile makes her think of spiders. "What are you reading?"

She motions to the cover without a word.

"Psychology, mmm?" (Rose flinches inwardly and makes a mental note to pronounce the word the way a snake would.)

"Does that interest you, dear?" Her mother leans against the bookcase, martini glass in hand.

"I suppose it does," Rose admits.

(Two days after she finishes the final chapter she awakens to find a pile of textbooks at the foot of her bed. She stares at them for a long time, blinking, rubbing her eyes as if it were a dream. She considers throwing them out the window. She considers shoving them into the cobwebs that gather under her bed. She considers taking them to the library and placing them in distant corners so they can gather dust and rot.

Instead, she removes her picturebooks from the shelf in her room and replaces them with the heavy volumes.

When she reads them, she makes sure to do so out in the open. Her mother smiles spidery and Rose smiles back just as darkly.)

*

She is nine-years-old when she first raises scissors to her hair.

Her mother freezes in the doorway and Rose thinks, how perfect. Framed just like a picture.

"I wanted it to be shorter," she says. "Like yours."

It's a Trojan horse disguised as an olive branch disguised as a child's simple, mundane explanation. Words carry weight and can be used in many, many ways. They can twist, they can lie, they can be carried like masks, they can be anything if you use them right.

(She can't remember her mother's face, the eyes so much like her own, and she can't remember whether she pursed her lips or smiled or simply stood there portrait-still. It does not matter. Such details mean little. It was not the first stone tossed, but it was the one that fell the heaviest, the hardest, the farthest at that time. Ripples through the pond. Collisions against the surface of something smooth and still and silent. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. A game is only ever a game until it crosses the line into war. She will walk on fire; bridges will burn in her wake.

There is no turning back.)

She is young but she is beginning to understand.


End file.
